No sophomore slump for OPUS Merriweather

tl;dr: OPUS Merriweather 2018 repeated the success of last year and
improved upon it.

The OPUS Merriweather festival, now in its second (and hopefully not
last) year, has two purposes, one commercial and one artistic: to
“disrupt the notions that Columbia is a sleepy suburb” (in the words
of Vanessa Rodriguez, director of marketing at the Howard Hughes
Corporation, the developer of downtown Columbia), and to “offer a
platform for visionary artists to push boundaries, disrupt
conventions, and create spaces of provocation and reflection” (per
Caroline Maxwell, artistic director of Wild Dogs International, the
Brooklyn-based curators of OPUS Merriweather). The OPUS 1 festival in
2017 was an excellent first step in achieving those goals, and the
now-renamed OPUS Merriweather event improved upon its success.

This is not a detailed review, but I did want to highlight some things
that went better this year, and a few things that I think still need
improvement:

First, the quality of the art and music remains high. I don’t think
there were any clunkers among the art I saw, and last year’s problem
of lines for installations was definitely solved: If you wanted to
see an art piece and knew where it was located then there was no
problem getting to see it. (The only event where I had some difficulty
seeing due to the crowd was Patrick Higgins’s and Monica Mirabile’s
dance/music piece “Dossier X” staged under Matthew Schreiber’s laser
installation “Gemini”.)

Particular favorites of mine included “Luminal Space Trilogy” by AES+F
(surrealistic art films on a super-wide screen), Maren Hassinger’s
“Pink Light” (a real crowd favorite for people who wanted to loiter
under it and take pictures of one another), and the above-mentioned
“Gemini” (one of the most beautiful laser installations I’ve ever
seen, transcending the stereotype of flashy concert and planetarium
laser shows).

The musical acts I saw were also high-quality: Quantic and Pantha Du
Prince did great DJ sets, Kadhja Bonet and Sudan Archives are
interesting up-and-coming musicians, and Oneohtrix Point Never is
world-famous among people who follow indie music. (An online
acquaintance of mine was supremely jealous of my being able to see OPN
live, and for free at that.)

The split of music acts between the Chrysalis and the lawn stage
worked well, with DJ acts on the lawn stage and other acts on the
Chrysalis alpha stage. I didn’t hear much if any bleed-through of
sound between the two venues. I’ll also repeat what I said last year
on Twitter, that this event very much demonstrates that the Chrysalis
is a capable and unique performance venue that is also very fan
friendly—I had no difficulty seeing the stage from any spot or
getting as close to the artists as I wanted.

Finally, the logistics of the event were pretty good, at least in my
experience. Parking was straighforward and close (I had reserved a
space in lot 2 right next to One Merriweather), and because I got
there early I had no trouble getting food. Everything I had to eat was
good, with the lychee and pork salad from Rose’s Luxury probably the
best thing I’ve ever eaten at a outdoor festival. (It was expensive,
but worth every penny.)

Oneohtrix Point Never plays on the alpha stage of the
Chrysalis amphitheater as the final musical act at OPUS Merriweather
2018. (Click for higher-resolution version.)

Now some thoughts on areas where OPUS Merriweather could further
improve (it’s a fairly short list):

First, I thought the map provided to attendees was confusing and
somewhat misleading. As an example, it shows the Yoko One piece “Wish
Tree” on the north side of the Chrysalis stage, and I got very
frustrated looking for it. It’s actually on the south side of the
Chrysalis, next to the driveway down from the VIP parking lot (a much
better and more accessible location, in my opinion). Also apparently
mislocated on the map was the Hisham Bharoocha + 80881 piece “The
Difference Between Difference and Difference Marked By Language”,
which I saw the sign for only while leaving the festival.

Speaking of maps, I had to continually turn on the flashlight on my
phone in order to consult the (paper) brochure containing the map and
schedule of events. The brochure itself advertised an OPUS
Merriweather app, but I couldn’t find any mention of it in the iOS App
Store. Maybe this app was Android only, or was not finished in time
for the event?

Finally, OPUS Merriweather showed yet again that Merriweather Park at
Symphony Woods really needs a comphrehensive well-lighted pathway
system. While there was a fair amount of ambient light, I spent more
time than I would have liked stumbling through the dark trying to
avoid tripping over electrical cables and other obstacles. I really
hope the Inner Arbor Trust is able to secure funding (whether from the
county, CA, or private donors) to be able to build the type of pathway
system envisioned in the Inner Arbor plans.

Despite the glitches, I think OPUS Merriweather was overall a very
successful event. I found it impossible to see and hear everything I
wanted to, and regret missing some things, but that’s to be expected
with a single-day festival with multiple simultaneous events going on.

As I wrote on Facebook a few days ago, I don’t think the target
audience of OPUS Merriweather is Columbians or county residents,
rather it’s residents and (especially) businesspeople in Baltimore and
DC who are candidates to live, work, and open businesses in downtown
Columbia. For that audience OPUS Merriweather offered a unique and
worthwhile experience that they wouldn’t have expected to be in
Columbia, and wouldn’t have been able to get where they live.

(As an example, Dan Reed of the Montgomery County urbanist blog “Just
Up the Pike” tweeted “I’d love to see MoCo parks host events
like #OpusMerriweather.” But Montgomery County has no equivalent to
Merriweather Post Pavilion or the Chrysalis, and I think they’re key
to making an event like OPUS work—simply having “lots of parks and
open space” is not sufficient.)

The bottom line is that Wild Dog International did a great job of
pulling together a stellar festival line-up, especially given the
constraints of having it be an all-ages event and (presumably) not
having art with overly political content. I don’t know whether OPUS
Merriweather met Howard Hughes’s goals from a marketing perspective,
but I’m glad they saw fit to sponsor the event, and hope they’ll
continue to do so. My last act when leaving the festival last night
was to visit Yoko Ono’s “Wish Tree”, where I wished for another OPUS
Merriweather Festival next year.